FALLON — “Fallon resident and former Western Nevada College English professor Michon Mackedon has received some impressive recognition for her new book, “Bombast: Spinning Atoms in the Desert.””
Book on Yucca Mountain Earns Local Author Several Awards – News Story – KRXI Reno.
Black Rock Institute is pleased to announce that Bombast Spinning Atoms in the Desert has been chosen as the winner of the Indie Excellence® Awards 2011 in the category Regional-Non-Fiction. And a silver award from the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the category West-Mountain – Best Regional Non-Fiction.
The New York Times – Green – A Blog About Energy and the Environment
Nevada is home to the largest nuclear bomb test site, and the proposed host for a nuclear waste repository. The scientists and engineers, the corporate executives, the lawyers and the elected officials have all had years to chew over how and why Nevada was selected, but now comes a new analysis, from an English major.
“Bombast: Spinning Atoms in the Desert,” published late last year by a nonprofit group in Reno, the Black Rock Institute, is a trip through what the author, Michon Mackedon, calls “nuclear colonialism.” Ms. Mackedon, of Fallon, in northern Nevada, is a former co-chairman of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, a state agency appointed to fight off the waste dump. She is also a professor emeritus of English at Western Nevada College.
The Black Rock Institute Press of Reno is pleased to announce that its new release, Bombast: Spinning Atoms in the Desert by Michon Mackedon, is a Finalist for a 2010 ForeWord Review Book of the Year Award. The Award program was created to spotlight distinctive books from independent publishers. Winners are determined by a panel of librarians and booksellers. Mackedon is Professor Emerita of English and Humanities at Western Nevada College and resides in Fallon. The book is described by ForeWord as “Atomic Nevada: How government military, boffins, and tame politicians bowed to the nuclear genie.”
The website for the Book of the Year Awards is www.bookoftheyearawards.com
Precipitate – Journal of the New Environmental Imagination
David Stentiford teaches developmental writing at the University of Nevada, Reno.
To spin the atom in the Nevada desert, explains Michon Mackedon—to get people on board with nuclear testing and repository sites—is much more than a scientific endeavor: it’s an art that requires data, predictions, and places to be stitched together with just the right influential language. Part commentary, part rhetorical analysis, “Bombast: Spinning Atoms in the Desert” tells the story of nuclear events related to the Nevada Test Site and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The book also explores terrain beyond the NTS to analyze language, cultural artifacts, and other nuclear events that contextualize Nevada’s role as the nation’s principal atomic weapons testing site and, at one point, the potential repository for the country’s high-level radioactive waste. Mackedon, who for twenty years served as a member and vice chairman for the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, tells us how the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and Yucca Mountain were promoted through clever “imagery, euphemism, and promotional rhetoric” that emphasized the naturalness of radiation, touted the clean safety records of tests, characterized the desert as a wasteland, and leveraged the language of “sound science” to achieve questionable ends. This “sound science,” the book argues, masked political interests, and aesthetic and sociological assumptions about Nevada.
“Bombast” shares a lot of information with readers. We learn, for example, how the first American nuclear tests in Alamogordo, New Mexico and the Marshall Islands informed site selection strategies that led to the Nevada Test Site’s establishment. We hear and see how journalists caricatured Nevadans in early reports from the NTS. We learn about the paradoxical job of the AEC: the commission had to pacify atomic testing in the eyes of concerned Nevadans, while at the same time, present a tougher front to the rest of the nation, bolstering public opinion that the atomic weapons detonated in the state could rapidly inflict enough force to destroy people, cities, and the infrastructure of America’s enemies.
Michon Mackedon, retired professor of English and Humanities at Western Nevada Community College, talks about her recent book, Bombast: Spinning Atoms in the Desert, about the history of nuclear testing in Nevada.
—Original airdate: 2/7/2011 on BYU Thinking Aloud
Nevada Rock Art by Peter Goin
Nevada Rock Art, the spectacular book published by Peter Goin, under the auspices of the Black Rock Institute Press, includes a chapter by BLM Archeologist and rock art specialist, Mark Boatwright, who is featured in the 06 January 2011 issue of the New York Times. Mark is interviewed there about the abject vandalism of rock art features in the Red Rock Canyon area, near Las Vegas, which falls under BLM jurisdiction. His chapter in NRA looks at similar themes: vandals modifying and ultimately destroying a long legacy of inscriptions on the land.
for further information, buy the book — or read the article:
Red Rocks of Nevada Smudged by Less Colorful Graffiti – NYTimes.com
From the Nevada Appeal, Sunday, October 10, 2010: According to Western Nevada College Emeritus English Professor Michon Mackedon,“If you place on a map of Nevada ‘X’s to mark areas used for nuclear testing and ‘O’s to mark areas examined as potential nuclear sites, you end up with a tic-tac-toe game board in the shape of the Silver State.”
Thursday, November 04, 2010
By Claudene Wharton
With fall upon us, hordes of children recently got a taste of their first “agricultural experience” – a trip to the pumpkin patch. Other city slickers are opting for a weekend in the wine country, venturing to nearby vineyards, blazing in colors of the sunset and buzzing with fall harvest activities.
As agritourism, farmers’ markets, and the organic and slow-food movements have taken off, so has a renewed interest in America’s agriculture. So, the time is ripe for a field guide to California’s most consistent economy – agriculture, consisting of more than 75,000 farms and ranches. Two University of Nevada, Reno Foundation Professors have teamed up to produce a fact-filled, entertaining, practical guide to California’s production of almost 400 different crops, which has created “the most dramatic modern agricultural landscape in the world,” as the authors argue in the book’s preface.
Paul Starrs, geography professor, and Peter Goin, art professor, have coauthored a Field Guide to California Agriculture, published by the University of California Press. They spent six years developing the work, obviously engaged in a labor of love, as their respect for the industry, its people and the agriculture’s many faces shine through in the 506-page book.
